Rump Parliament (Germany)
The rump parliament is the assembly of the remaining members of the first democratically elected all-German parliament, which continues to meet in Stuttgart, known as the Frankfurt National Assembly after its former location . This rump parliament met from June 6th until it was forcibly expelled on June 18, 1849 in the capital of the Kingdom of Württemberg . The term is a mocking reference to the term rump parliament for the English lower house , after all unpopular MPs were expelled from parliament under Oliver Cromwell in 1648.
As part of the liberal and nation-state March Revolution of 1848/49 in the states of the German Confederation, the Stuttgart rump parliament was the last attempt to save the remaining parliamentary-democratic structures of this revolution, which in the early summer of 1849 was on the brink of final suppression. At the same time, the rump parliament was an expression of the split in the parliamentary movement in the area of what was then Germany's geographical imagination. Because while the moderate liberal as well as the conservative MPs resigned their mandate in the National Assembly in May 1849 and turned away disappointed both from their own work and from the left wing, the deputies of the rump parliament essentially comprised the left, revolutionary spectrum of MPs, which sought the basically no longer feasible possibility not only to continue the work of the National Assembly that had already been decided, but to implement a more extensive democratic and social revolutionary program.
Combat the National Assembly
After the rejection of the imperial crown offered by the Imperial Deputation to the National Assembly by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV and the hesitant acceptance of the Imperial Constitution by the states of the German Confederation , the work of the Frankfurt National Assembly had practically failed. The larger monarchies such as Prussia , Austria , Bavaria and Saxony , but also the Kingdom of Hanover , illegally dismissed their deputies. Many moderately liberal MPs who had stood behind the concept of a constitutional monarchy also resigned because of the violent uprisings ( Baden Revolution , Dresden May Uprising , Elberfeld Uprising , Iserlohn Uprising of 1849 , Palatinate Uprising ). On May 26, the National Assembly had to lower its quorum to 100 members due to the permanently low attendance . In the course of May 1849, mostly left-wing and some conservative MPs remained in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. This in turn led to the fact that the city of Frankfurt prepared the expulsion of the remaining MPs from the city under Prussian pressure.
On May 30, the majority of the National Assembly therefore decided to accept the invitation of the Württemberg MP Friedrich Römer , who was also the Württemberg Minister of Justice , and to move from the Paulskirche to the capital of Württemberg. This solution seemed to be advantageous to the MPs, as Württemberg was the first kingdom to recognize the imperial constitution on April 28, 1849, due to internal tensions and at the instigation of Römers, and was outside Prussia's sphere of influence, but close to the southern German strongholds of the democratic movements.
Radicalization of the rump parliament
In Stuttgart, the 154 remaining MPs met from June 6th in the half-moon hall of the Württemberg Chamber of Estates . Wilhelm Loewe (Calbe) was elected as the new President of Parliament because the previous President Theodor Reh had resigned from his mandate. Since Reichsverweser Archduke Johann did not recognize the Stuttgart rump parliament, the entire provisional central authority was declared to be deposed by the deputies. Instead, the rump parliament proclaimed a provisional imperial government , to which the deputies Raveaux , Vogt , Simon and Schüler and August Becher belonged.
The most important committee was the committee of fifteen , named after the number of delegates , which replaced the committee for the enforcement of the imperial constitution . The new conference location and the imperial government could not hide the fact that the rump parliament was not only without real power, but also that the actual legitimation and the anchoring with the political events in Germany was hardly available. This is how Römer wrote to Loewe on June 17:
“I don't want to argue with you about the legal existence of the National Assembly, which has fallen to a hundred members. For myself, I acknowledge that the National Assembly has the right to change its rules of procedure with regard to the quorum of the assembly and to gradually reduce it to three members. But when it comes to the recognition of the resolutions of such an assembly, I am convinced that one must apply a standard other than the merely legal one. "
The End
In view of the revolutionary unrest in the context of the imperial constitution campaign with the nearby fires in Baden and the Palatinate, the Württemberg government regretted the invitation to parliament, which was not coordinated with it, after a few days, especially since the rump parliament and the imperial government became more and more radicalized and led to tax refusal called for military resistance against the non-recognition of the constitution through the formation of an imperial army.
At the same time, the Württemberg government feared intervention by the Prussian troops advancing to Baden due to the presence of the rump parliament in Stuttgart.
Römer resigned his mandate in the first session on June 6, after the new provisional imperial government, following its own understanding of the imperial government, but without any sense of political reality, claimed sovereignty over all federal states of the German Confederation and thus also impaired the autonomy of Württemberg . After the session on June 8th, Parliament had to leave the Chamber of Estates and look for a provisional venue.
On the evening of June 17, Römer informed the President of Parliament “that the Württemberg government is in a position to no longer tolerate the days of the National Assembly that had moved here and the switching of the Reich Regency in Stuttgart and Württemberg, which it elected on the 6th of this month On June 18, the Württemberg military occupied the venue, the Fritz'sche Reithaus, before the meeting began . The demonstration in the direction of the meeting room, which was then improvised by the 99 MPs still in Stuttgart, was quickly disbanded by the military without bloodshed, and the non-Württemberg MPs were expelled from the country.
The Reichsregentschaft around Raveaux fled via Freiburg im Breisgau to Baden-Baden , where they arrived on June 22nd, in order to then go to Karlsruhe with some MPs to the seat of the Baden Revolutionary Government and continue the National Assembly there. The day before, however, the Baden revolutionaries had suffered a decisive defeat in the battle near Waghäusel and were in a sometimes disorderly retreat, especially since a second Prussian army had crossed the Rhine near Germersheim . The Reichsregentschaft then turned back to Freiburg, where it took its seat from June 24th. On June 30, she fled to Switzerland from the approaching troops .
Remember on site
The rump parliament met from June 6th to 18th at the following locations: In the Old Parliament , in the Fritzschen Reithaus, in the August-Kolb beer hall and in the Hotel Marquardt . On June 18, 1849, the MPs set out on foot from the Hotel Marquardt to the Fritzschen Reithaus. On the orders of Friedrich Römer , the riding house had already been surrounded by troops. On the way, the deputies in Leuschnerstrasse, which is located in the hospital district, were stopped by a dragoon regiment . At this place there is now a stele that reminds of the rump parliament in Stuttgart.
swell
The minutes of the meetings and documents of the rump parliament are stored in the Federal Archives in Koblenz together with the documents of the Paulskirche under the signature DB 51.
literature
- Emil Adolph Roßmaessler : The German National Assembly in Stuttgart. A diary from a member of the same . Georg Egersdorff, Hechingen 1849 digitized
- Heinrich Best, Wilhelm Weege: Biographical manual of the members of the Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49 . Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998. ISBN 3-7700-0919-3
- Johann Gustav Droysen: Files and records on the history of the Frankfurt National Assembly . Reprint of the 1924 edition. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1967. ISBN 3-7648-0251-0
- Michael Kienzle ; Dirk Mende: “Do you want to ride down old Uhland?” How the 48 revolution ended in Stuttgart. German Schiller Society, Marbach am Neckar 1998 (= traces, vol. 44), ISBN 3-929146-83-5 .
- Wilhelm Ribhegge: Parliament as a nation. The Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49 . Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998. ISBN 3-7700-0920-7
- House of History Baden-Württemberg (Hrsg.): Save freedom. The rump parliament in Stuttgart in 1849 - a revolution is coming to an end . Stuttgart 1999 ISBN 3-933726-14-X
Web links
- Bernhard Wördehoff: Only soldiers can help against democrats: The shameful end of the first German parliament on June 18, 1849 in Stuttgart ; Article in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit of June 16, 1989, No. 25/1989, pp. 45/46
Individual evidence
- ^ Südwest Presse Online -dienste GmbH: Rump Parliament: Summer series "Resistance": The Stuttgart "Rump Parliament". August 17, 2017, accessed June 3, 2019 .